SDSU Financial Markets Lab · 2026-27
AI is real.
The price is a bet.
We measure the gap.
A year-long undergraduate research project. We take today's AI stock prices, work backward to what they quietly assume about 2030, and test whether all those assumptions can be true at the same time. Starts September 17. No experience needed.
If the first bar ends up bigger than the second, they cannot all be right. That is a fact about today, not a prediction about tomorrow.
The Question
How much of AI's price
is already real?
Nobody in this lab thinks AI is fake. It is real and it is making people more productive. But the numbers being thrown around right now are unlike anything we have seen, and somebody should actually measure them.
So we are not asking whether AI is good or bad, and we are not calling a bubble. We are asking something much narrower: how much of today's prices is backed by cash and output that already exist, and how much is a bet on things that have not happened yet?
Doctors do not predict the day you will have a heart attack. They measure your blood pressure and tell you what it means.
That is the whole design. Every claim we make is a measurement about right now, true or false the day we compute it, no matter what the market does next. Ask "is this a bubble" and you cannot know for years. Ask "what has to be true for this price to make sense" and you can answer today.
Forecasting the FOMC
A multinomial logistic regression trained on 163 Fed meetings (1998 to 2025), forecasting each decision as a hike, hold or cut from the macroeconomic data available beforehand. Built end to end by students.
Why Join
What you leave with.
A paper with your name on it
Real published research for your resume or grad school application.
→Valuation you can actually do
Build a DCF, then run it backward. This is the skill the interview asks about.
→Bloomberg Terminal time
Plus R for the modeling. Real market data, not textbook examples.
→Your own company to cover
One name, all year, yours. You become the person in the room who knows it best.
→One hour a week
Built to fit around a full course load.
→Join the Lab Now recruiting
Take a seat.
Open to any SDSU student, any major, any year. You do not need to have taken econometrics, and you do not need to know R. Plenty of people arrive knowing neither.
First session is Thursday, September 17, and the project runs through April 22. Fill out the form and we will send you the room details and what to read before it.
Takes 30 seconds · no commitment yet
The form asks four quick things:
- Your name and year
- Your SDSU email
- Your major
- Anything you want us to know
Opens in Google Forms · takes about 30 seconds
The Fine Print
Here's the info.
Sept 17 to April 22
Want us to visit your class? mkocherga7657@sdsu.edu